The Devil's Banquet

Four years after bringing the infamous child-killer known as the ‘Nursery Butcher’ to justice – and still haunted by the brutal vengeance exacted by the psychopath’s ruthless allies – Cockney private eye George Harley is finally back in business, operating a new detective agency in the heart of London’s Soho.

Harley and his new assistant Bunty are presented with their first case when a distressed father engages them to investigate the disappearance of his daughter, who has run away from home to join a cabaret troupe led by the notorious ‘Queen of Depravity’ Ilse Blau, now in London after being driven out by the Nazis from Weimar-era Berlin.

But in Harley’s liminal world, things are never straightforward, and the detective soon finds himself embroiled in another pitch-dark scenario, with London’s decadent, thrill-seeking gentry on one side and West End mobsters and wide-boys in search of easy cash on the other. When he discovers that a six-year-old has been kidnapped from an orphanage, Harley is convinced his old nemesis has somehow broken out of the lunatic asylum and is back on the streets of London, up to his old tricks.

Set in 1933 and following on from the events of Midnight Streets, this second instalment in the Piccadilly Noir series sees George Harley return to the frowzy alleyways and sleazy nightclubs of the UK capital in search of answers – no matter how uncomfortable they might turn out to be. But when he becomes ensnared in the mind games of a wily femme fatale, and finds himself up against ruthless Glaswegian gangsters, well-connected occultists, and undercover SS agents, those answers become increasingly hard to find.